As you move through life it seems that progress or success is associated with concept of addition and making your life bigger. When you’re young you add more friends, more social activities, more responsibilities. You go from a small school to a big school, from no job to a part time job, perhaps you add in a sport or hobby. Then you may add a relationship, and responsibility of a more important job, or maybe new credentials, licenses or certifications.

Maybe you just need a little less of what you already have

From there you might to add to your resume with more responsibility, a bigger title, a bigger family. Then it expands to more  money, two cars instead of one, bigger tv, a bigger house, more vacation time, more social events and so on.

For most of your life the concept of success and progress is quite literally tied to the idea of adding something, anything, to your life.

This concept of addition = success may fall apart on you when you consider the unique situation of diet/fitness/health and weight loss.

Many people make the mistake of assuming the path to a healthier body, a better looking body, being in better shape, improving their fitness and losing weight is the result of adding yet another piece to their life that has been missing.

The addition could be a supplement, a new workout, a new cardio routine, a new yoga routine, a new functional training program, a new kettle bell, a new bosu ball, a new magazine subscription, a new trainer, a new functional food, a new diet, another new diet, another new diet, another new diet (this wasn’t a typo…I’m just trying to capture the concept of how many diets most people try), more supplements, more functional foods, more healthy food choices…more more more.

Most people never consider the concept that what they need to get in shape is simply less of what they already have. Less food, less magazines, less diet and fitness information, less supplements, less functional foods, less workouts get caught up deciding what to do with, less diet books to read, less of all of it.

Simplifying your diet and fitness life is likely the first step that most people need to do nowadays before they can make any real progress towards getting in shape. Once you start down the path of diet and fitness ‘addition’ there is no end to the amount of things you can add (and money you can spend) without making any progress.

In direct contradiction to the rest of your life, diet and fitness progress is almost always made when you take the path of less not more.

Your job is to find the sweet spot and add only what is necessary to make progress in diet and fitness without overloading on too much of everything. In most cases you and I and everyone else has already added way more than what we need. This means your main order of business is downsizing what you consume (both food and information) to get in shape and stay there.

John

I’ve recently been doing research on what the placebo effect is and how strange this phenomenon can be.

It doesn't matter what system you choose to follow, but you have to believe it can work

In many health related scientific research studies a real treatment (a drug, or physical therapy) is tested against a placebo.

A placebo is either an inert drug (no active ingredient such as sugar pills) or even a sham treatment that does nothing (placebo acupuncture where the needle never actually even penetrates the skin but the patient thinks it has)

Throughout the scientific literature you’ll find out that the placebo group shows measurable results. In most cases placebo only applies to things like pain that are subjective in nature, but hey, a reduction in pain is still a reduction (even if it’s a change in your perception of that pain)

And this brings up a much bigger issue, and that is the perception vs the reality. If I tell you that you’ve received a pain killing drug (but it was a fake), and you feel less pain anyway…then the fake has to be considered a success.

This area of research is leading to a new understanding of how much your mind and body are linked and how important your belief in a treatment or a system is to the success you might hope to have with it.

And this also goes for diet and fitness programs. If you start to believe that one workout or one way of eating is superior to others you may very well start experiencing a better overall effect from doing that system. You might just stick to it longer or be more diligent following it, or even be happier and feel more confident about yourself while you’re following it. Whatever the exact mechanism the point is belief precedes action and results.

This is also why you need to pick one program to follow, one that you can believe in, and stick to it for a prescribed amount of time and see it through to it’s conclusion or to whatever time goal you’ve set (be it 12 weeks, or 6 months or whatever)

During your time on a given system you should also try to insulate yourself from reading diet or fitness theories from other sources as they could easily sway your belief and start making you second guess what you’re doing.

It’s this second guessing that could throw a monkey wrench into your current progress and sabotage any progress you were making.The more conflicting opinions you read the worse this will get to the point where you dont’ know what to believe…and this is the point when you will have become totally frozen, paralyzed by information overload and getting nowhere.

So if you have a diet or fitness goal you’d like to achieve (more muscle, losing some fat, or just getting into the best shape you can in the next 12 weeks) this is what I want you to do:

Pick one system to follow (obviously I am biased towards Adonis Index for men and Venus Index for women, but any system is worth a try).

Follow that system faithfully and to the letter for the prescribed amount of time.

During the time you are following that system don’t read or consume information about any other system or conflicting points of view until you’ve made it to the end.

This is the only way to give that system a fair shake and truly find out if it will work for you.

John

I started working out when I was about 17 years old and have been doing some form of structured workout since then (I’m currently 36 so that’s about 19 years of workouts).

If you get too far into the powerlifting culture this body shape can become the goal

In that time I’ve gone through my functional training phase, my powerlifting phase, my bodybuilding phase (drugs and all), my olympic lifting phase, and some form of what is now called crossfit (back then it was just called cross training, but now it’s got a cult associated with it)

One thing that was never in question was that I was going to do some sort of working out no matter what it was. What kept changing was my local and short term focus…my long term focus was always to improve/maintain the look and shape (and to some degree cardiovascular condition) of my body.

In general I think many people who workout go through similar phases where they explore each style of training and the different social groups they lead you into. No doubt that things like bodybuilding, powerlifting, running (and now ‘crossfitting’) are lifestyles/cultures and not just a style of exercise.

But in the end everyone wants to look better, and some of these training styles don’t necessarily lend to an improvement in the look or shape of your body as much as they just lead you into a social group that may or may not value the same things as you do about improving your body…and at some level that includes the way your body looks.

There seems to be value in adopting some sort of structure to workout in if that is what you need to keep you motivated to workout, but the issue arises when you get side tracked from your original goal and in some cases end up going the opposite direction.

Nobody would workout if it made them look worse (even if it improved some other measure of health).

Powerlifters are a good example of people who become purists about the workout itself and forget why they started working out in the first place…and in most cases it was to improve the look and shape of their body.

I think this is a simple example of goal hijacking that is adopted by people who are not getting the results they want from their workout. Namely their body is not looking like the lean chiseled muscular physique they were hoping for, so they turn their focus to a strength goal, or an endurance goal, or some other performance metric that doesn’t require a look, and frankly doesn’t require as much effort (specifically on the diet side).

Working out is only one part of the equation that is required for getting into shape. The other part is diet…but effective dieting is much harder than effective training. Lots of people can get strong, not very many people ever really get in great shape.

Finding ways to stay motivated to workout is a great idea and if that means setting some other performance goal like strength or endurance or a distance run then go for it. Just be clear what you real goal is and if the look and shape of your body is still headed in the direction you want it to.

John

After studying nutrition and exercise physiology I have come to the conclusion that most people that start reading about diet and fitness eventually lose sight of their original goal of ‘getting in great shape’ and quickly get lost in the process of diet or fitness as their identity.

Who are you?

People seem to latch onto a label or community or identity to become a part of regardless of the result it produces (and I believe they do this precisely because of a lack of results).

All of my research and interactions with clients leads me to believe that all people just want to look and feel better about themselves and their body. And to be specific, they want to be in great shape.

Nobody would workout or pay attention to their diet if it somehow made their body look worse (even if it made them feel better).

So there is no way to detach what diet and exercise does for the physical appearance of your body. Looking good and feeling good are one and the same.

But a strange thing happens when people fail to see the results they were hoping for…they start adopting the lifestyle of dieting or exercise itself as the goal, and give up on the original goal of getting the body they’ve always wanted.

This is how people can get lost in a particular style of training or a way of eating that was never their original intention. Sure there are some people who really do want to be a power lifter or a ‘crossfitter’ (whatever that is)…and some people who really feel better eating vegetarian or ‘paleo’ style etc.

But it’s likely that the majority of people who attempt any of these diet or training styles are really just people who want to look better and have so far failed to do so. Then they turn to these ‘alternative’ ways of exercising and eating, and before long get caught up with the identity and forget why they started dieting and working out in the first place.

The truth is that none of these identities are meant to produce a specific body shape or look, they’re an identity in and of themselves.

I wonder how many people who are living within one of these identities would trade it in a nano second if they could be guaranteed to get the body they’ve always wanted another way. I bet most wouldn’t even think twice about it.

So my challenge to you is to take an introspective look at what you’re doing with your diet and fitness lifestyle and decide if you’re latching onto an identity or are you  actually trying to get results. You might surprise yourself with your answer.

John

P.S. Check out my other blogs for todays podcasts and weight loss info at:

The AdonisIndex blog -> How to Read a Research Paper

The VenusIndex blog -> How I lost 47lbs: Interview with Lisa Etwell

The Anything Goes Diet blog -> How many meals should you eat per day to lose weight?

Forget the "Rules" You've heard, make up your own.

The diet and fitness industry is hardly at a loss for words. Browsing the interwebs (or is it the world wide net…) will bring up thousands of pages of information, tips, and endless ‘must do’ and ‘never do’ lists.

Within 5 minutes of searching you could easily come up with dozens of ‘rules‘ of fitness and ways to live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle.

Almost all of them revolve around some sort of dietary intervention like changing the timing of a meal, or the composition of that meal.

After that you’ll get extensive lists of good and bad foods, supplements you should be taking, specific ways to workout, and specific times of day to workout etc…

At no point is the practicality of these recommendations considered, the story you hear is preached like a gospel and you may start feeling lousy about yourself if you can’t follow every recommendation you’ve heard.

The stress and guilt you might start feeling for not following these ‘rules’ could easily erase any health benefits you’re getting from doing what you can.

This is hardly a way to approach health and fitness.

Every little bit counts, and whatever you can do and whatever fits with your current lifestyle is just fine.

If you’ve heard that ‘cardio’ in the morning is best, but you can only do it in the evening, that’s just fine. Don’t let some magazine or website steal the positive emotional boost you get from exercising by telling you that you’re doing it at the wrong time of day.

If you lift weights but you don’t have the money or time for a post workout protein shake then don’t worry about it, you’re still going to build muscle and strength no matter what the web-o-sphere of self proclaimed experts say.

Protect what gets into your brain, because it's going to be hard to get it out.

The moral of today’s post is to be careful what you read and what you let get into your brain.

If you’re reading this blog you probably already do lots of healthy and positive things for your body on a daily basis, but if you read too much ‘info’ out there you might just end up forgetting what you’ve done that was good and stress about all the ‘rules’ of fitness you’re still not following.

Instead of following everyone else’s rules try making up a few things for yourself.

Try  to do one exercise ‘thing’ per day for your fitness, and one ‘nutrition/food’ thing per day.

Make it up just for you and it’s gotta fit your life.

I’d like to hear what you’re planning on doing if you don’t mind putting it in the comments section.

John